ctrlaltAfrique

Saturday, February 4, 2012

A 3minuter (shot and edited running-gun style, with permission) on the Spirits Indigenous, a trio of woman griots from Swaziland who'd raised funds and plane-trained-and-automobiled it to the National Arts Festival in the eternally weird Grahamstown. Think Sis Busi Mhlongo meets Marie Daulne.

Friday, December 23, 2011

First there was free association. Surely. What else but indulgent free association births our every noble grasp to bring it all full focus and within the rule of thirds? This particular free association begins at the end of the world. Not the Mayans' one, but Nostradamus' one. The one we enthusiastically referred to as 'the year 2000' up until mainstream media injected 'Y2K' into the mix and people started stocking up on non-perishables.

Around that time, the nascent years of South Africa's transition into democracy under a free-floating global disquiet, one of my favourite lecturers would say it all the time: "there's no cool spot in the shade". She was talking the philosophy of science, and critical theory; guiding us past the pitfalls of compulsory truths and working at the fabric of that age-old tussle between fact and story, history and story, the real and ..story. And although back then I didn't quite get what it meant, I dug the sentence and it's attitude. It took me ten years to truly understand why it spoke to me but now perhaps older and wiser, I am able to take on that yakuza collection of text.

Damn skippy there's no cool spot in the shade. For one, the ozone layer's so huge we Southies can't focus on diddly unless we use both hands to cup our eyes somehow. Nobody anywhere is ever truly impervious. Everyone is somehow complicit. And everybody has their own story.

Throw-forward to 2011. 363 days before the Mayans' 'end time'. 363 days to beam out our stories before what might be 'the real Y2K'. And it's on. Darkie chick with an SD (content really is king) camera. And a military cap and a camo knapsack I bought from the conscription survivalist at the Milnerton market before the whole place got gentrified. Thas' right: guerilla. Seeking no cool spot. And anyone who doesn't mind reading their movies is welcome to come with me.